Spiritual Discernment

In response to God’s revealing the dream of Nebuchadnezzar and its interpretation, Daniel offered praise to God (Daniel 2:20–23). Only the eternal God has all wisdom and might (power) because He is sovereign in all the affairs of men. Daniel understood that the end for which his sovereign Lord orchestrated all things was His glorious eternal kingdom.

Whatever happens until the kingdom is fully established must be part of God’s preparing for it. Thus, in the passage a powerful truth is revealed: God “gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.” So, who is wise? They are those who fear Him: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight [the power of spiritual discernment]” (Proverbs 9:10). The Hebrew word translated “insight” is the counterpart of the Aramaic term translated “understanding” in Daniel 2:21. This term describes spiritual discernment or divine perspective that God gives to those fear Him. Through insight He reveals “deep and hidden things.” Those who fear God live wholly devoted to Him and His will; to them He gives spiritual discernment.

In 1 Corinthians 2 Paul addresses this gift, urging the troubled church to get right in order to be used of the Spirit to represent properly their risen Lord. He wrote, “Among the mature … we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (vv. 6, 7). He then cites Isaiah 64:4, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (v. 9). This is not some mystical or charismatic gift.  It is what “God has revealed to us through the Spirit” in order that “we might understand the things freely given us by God” (vv. 10, 12).

This insight and discernment enables believers to know what God is doing in the world. It is not some special revelation that overrides Scripture. It is wisdom and insight “prepared for those who love him” to discern events through Scripture by the Holy Spirit. Those who love Christ put Him above all else, fear Him, long to know Him, and obey Him. This wisdom and insight come as believers wrestle with God in earnest prayer (“strive together”—Romans 15:30).

Paul wrote these things to a very troubled church, deeply concerned to correct their shortcomings so that their “faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (v. 5). “The natural person [psuchikos, soulish person] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” A soul (psuchikos) governed by breath only (life-principle) not being born again, lives only by his sensuous nature, subjected to fleshly appetite and passion. On the other hand, “The spiritual person judges [discerns through divine wisdom] all things but is himself to be judged [discerned] by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:14–16). As Daniel of old, we have access to divine wisdom and insight by His Spirit so that we might live out the will of God and represent Christ well in these difficult days.